在1月6日美国国会大厦致命暴动的前几周，少数美国人——著名的政治家、默默无闻的地方官僚——站出来阻止时任总统唐纳德·特朗普前所未有的推翻美国人民自由公平投票的企图。
自那以后的一年里，支持特朗普的共和党人一直在努力为下一次扫清道路。
在战场州和更远的地方，共和党人正在控制曾经被忽视的选举南尽管这一努力是不完整和不平衡的，但外部民主专家和民主党人正在敲响警钟，警告称，美国正在目睹一场“慢动作起义”，比特朗普去年的夺权失败更有可能成功。
他们指出了越来越多的证据:几位否认特朗普落选的候选人正在竞选可能在2024年下届总统选举中发挥关键作用的职位。在密歇根州，共和党正在补充名不见经传的地方委员会成员，这些委员会可能会阻碍选举的批准。在威斯康星州和宾夕法尼亚州，共和党控制的立法机构支持对2020年选举进行开放式“审查”，这是仿照亚利桑那州存在严重缺陷的回顾进行的。这些努力将在未来几年助长对2020年结果的虚假信息和愤怒。
所有这一切都发生在共和党越来越支持特朗普的时候，特朗普将否认2020年选举结果作为检验其支持度的试金石。特朗普赞扬了1月6日的骚乱者，并支持旨在清洗与他作对的议员的初选。16名共和党州长签署了法律，使得投票变得更加困难。美联社-NORC公共事务研究中心的民调显示，三分之二的共和党人不相信民主党人乔·拜登是合法当选总统的。
专家表示，结果是，另一场毫无根据的选举挑战变得更有可能，而不是更少。
“现在还不清楚共和党是否愿意再接受失败，”哈佛大学政治学家、《民主是如何消亡的》一书的合著者史蒂文·莱维斯基说"该党本身已经成为一股反民主的力量。"
美国民主从一开始就有缺陷，被两党操纵。数百万美国人——黑人、妇女、印第安人和其他人——被排除在这一进程之外。共和党人和民主党人都制定了对他们有利的操纵规则的法律。
专家认为，这一次是不同的:在这个国家的现代历史上，从来没有一个主要政党试图将选举管理变成一种明显的党派行为。
敲响警钟的共和党人正努力让自己的政党听到他们的声音。调查1月6日起义的众议院委员会成员、怀俄明州的共和党众议员利兹·切尼或伊利诺伊州的亚当·金辛格经常被视为党内叛教者而被解雇。其他人则认为否认选举只不过是分散注意力。
但是一些地方官员，最接近这个过程及其脆弱性的人，正在恳求改变。在最近威斯康星州的一次新闻发布会上，共和党州参议员、前选举事务员凯瑟琳·伯尼耶(Kathleen Bernier)谴责了她的政党试图控制选举进程的努力。
伯尼耶说:“人们为了刺激基层所做的这些虚构的事情是卑鄙的，我认为任何当选的立法者都不应该玩这种游戏。
本地控制
控制威斯康星州州议会的大多数共和党人不同意伯尼耶的观点，威斯康星州是拜登支持但特朗普错误地声称他赢了的少数几个州之一。2021年初，威斯康星州共和党人命令他们的立法审计局审查2020年的选举。该审查没有发现重大欺诈行为。上个月，保守的威斯康星法律和自由研究所的一项调查也得出了同样的结论。
尽管如此，许多共和党人确信出了问题。他们指出，无党派的威斯康星州选举委员会——共和党领导的立法机构和当时的共和党州长八年前为管理该州选举而创建的——如何改变了对地方选举官员的指导，以使疫情期间的投票更加容易。
这导致了州立法机构和委员会之间争夺选举控制权的斗争。
代表密尔沃基北部保守郊区的共和党参议员阿尔伯塔·达林(Alberta Darling)说:“我们觉得我们需要直截了当地让人们相信我们有诚信。“我们不仅仅是想和特朗普一起改变选举。我们正试图挖掘下一次选举，改变违规行为。”
共和党人也在重塑其他州的选举方式。在佐治亚州，共和党州长今年签署的一项选举法案赋予共和党控制的大会控制州选举委员会的新权力，该委员会控制着当地的选举委员会。
这项法律被用来对民主党占绝对优势的富尔顿县的运作进行审查，富尔顿县是亚特兰大大部分地区的所在地，这可能会导致州政府接管。立法机构还通过了允许地方官员将民主党人从其他六个县的选举委员会中除名的措施。
在宾夕法尼亚州，共和党控制的立法机构正在对总统选举进行审查，传唤选民信息，民主党人认为这是对选民隐私的前所未有的侵犯。与此同时，特朗普的支持者正成群结队地报名参加地方选举工作。一名参加了1月6日在该国首都举行的集会的牧师最近赢得了一场竞选，成为兰开斯特县农村地区监督投票的选举法官。
在密歇根州，共和党关注的是该州的县拉票委员会。鲜为人知的委员会的权力在2020年11月短暂成为焦点，当时特朗普敦促监督韦恩县(民主党堡垒底特律的所在地)的两名共和党董事会成员投票阻止选举认证。
在一名共和党成员违抗特朗普后，当地共和党人用罗伯特·博伊德(Robert Boyd)取代了她，后者告诉《底特律自由报》，他不会证明拜登去年获胜。
博伊德没有回复置评电话。
在该州人口第三多的县马科姆县，也发生了类似的互换——用一个鹦鹉学舌的特朗普选举谎言取代一个传统的共和党人。
《底特律新闻报》10月报道称，在密歇根州人口最多的11个县中，共和党已经更换了8个县的拉票委员会成员
密歇根州官员表示，如果拉票委员会不认证选举，他们可能会被起诉并被迫这样做。尽管如此，这一过程可能会造成混乱，并被用作选举纠纷背后的战斗口号。
“他们正在为一场慢动作暴动打基础，”选举律师、密歇根州民主党前主席马克·布鲁尔(Mark Brewer)说。
该州最高选举官员、国务卿乔斯林·本森警告说:“质疑2020年选举的运动现在已经把他们的目光转向了...改变那些身居要职的人，保护2020年。”
特朗普的报应
这包括本森。
多名共和党人排队挑战她，包括社区大学教授克里斯蒂娜·卡拉莫(Kristina Karamo)，她指控2020年选举存在欺诈行为，并声称1月6日的袭击者实际上是试图陷害特朗普支持者的反法西斯活动分子。
特朗普已经明确了他的意图:他正在寻求驱逐阻碍他的全州官员，并用盟友取而代之。
“我们的国务卿没有为美国人民做正确的事情，”支持卡拉莫的特朗普本月告诉美联社。
特朗普最突出的推动是在佐治亚州，这位前总统支持美国众议员乔迪·希塞(Jody Hice)，他在1月6日与共和党国务卿布拉德·拉芬斯佩格的初选中投票反对拜登在选举团的胜利。他拒绝了特朗普要求“找到”足够票数宣布他获胜的请求。
特朗普还鼓励美国前参议员大卫·珀杜在共和党初选中挑战州长布莱恩·坎普。坎普拒绝了特朗普宣布他为2020年大选获胜者的请求。
10月，杰森·谢泼德(Jason Shepherd)在该组织指责坎普后辞去了科布县共和党主席的职务。“这是鼠目寸光。谢博德在接受采访时说:“他们没有考虑到这种情况的后果。"他们想从布赖恩·肯普那里得到他们应得的那一磅肉，因为布赖恩·肯普遵守法律."
在内华达州，法官驳回了多起试图推翻拜登胜利的诉讼。前共和党州议员吉姆·马尚(Jim Marchant)提起诉讼，旨在推翻他在国会的失败，他现在正在竞选国务卿，诉讼也被驳回。现任共和党国务卿芭芭拉·塞加夫斯基任期有限，她发现竞选中没有重大欺诈行为。
马尚说，他不仅仅是寻求成为特朗普的推动者，尽管他在国会竞选中得到特朗普的支持。“在他出现之前，我就一直在为此奋斗，”马尚谈到特朗普时说。“我们想要的只是公平透明的选举。”
在宾夕法尼亚州，共和党州参议员道格·马斯特里亚诺(Doug Mastriano)已经发出竞选州长的信号。1月6日，他在白宫附近组织了特朗普支持者的公共汽车，参加特朗普的集会。在亚利桑那州，州众议员马克·芬奇姆(Mark Finchem)竞选国务卿让许多共和党人感到不安，因为他在2020年11月主持了为期一天的听证会，特朗普的顾问鲁道夫·朱利安尼出席了听证会。重复特朗普选举谎言的前新闻主播卡利·莱克(Kari Lake)正在竞选共和党州长道格·杜西(Doug Ducey)的继任者，杜西顶住了特朗普选举年的压力，被禁止连任。
在亚利桑那州的其他地方，马里科帕县记录员斯蒂芬·里奇为自己的办公室辩护，反对阴谋性的选举审查，他已经成立了一个政治委员会，为那些说出选举真相的共和党人提供财政支持。但他对其政党内部持续存在选举被盗的神话持现实态度。
“现在，”里奇说，“激励结构似乎强烈倾向于做错误的事情。”
州长的高赌注竞选
在密歇根州、宾夕法尼亚州和威斯康星州，民主党州长一直是共和党彻底改革选举的主要障碍。最重要的是，他们否决了民主党人认为旨在让有色人种更难投票的新规定。
州长在美国选举中发挥着重要作用:他们认证所在州的获胜者，为选举团成员的任命扫清道路。这引发了人们的担忧，即特朗普友好的州长可能会试图证明他——如果他参加2024年的竞选并成为共和党提名人——是他们州选举人票的获胜者，而不管计票结果如何。
此外，一些共和党人认为，无论计票结果如何，州立法机构都可以提名自己的选民。
但是民主党在这些竞选中没有取得什么成功。试图赢得州立法机构的民主党团体“州项目”的丹尼尔·中队说，选民很难相信这个系统会脆弱。
他说:“今天美国最有动力的选民是那些认为2020年大选被偷走的人。“承认这一点正在进行中，需要从我们任何人都经历过的任何美国核心价值体系中进行这样的飞跃。”
'Slow-motion insurrection': How GOP seizes election power
In the weeks leading up to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a handful of Americans — well-known politicians, obscure local bureaucrats — stood up to block then-President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attempt to overturn a free and fair vote of the American people.
In the year since, Trump-aligned Republicans have worked to clear the path for next time.
In battleground states and beyond, Republicans are taking hold of the once-overlooked machinery ofelections. While the effort is incomplete and uneven, outside experts on democracy and Democrats are sounding alarms, warning that the United States is witnessing a “slow-motion insurrection” with a better chance of success than Trump’s failed power grab last year.
They point to a mounting list of evidence: Several candidates who deny Trump’s loss are running for offices that could have a key role in the election of the next president in 2024. In Michigan, the Republican Party is restocking members of obscure local boards that could block approval of an election. In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the GOP-controlled legislatures are backing open-ended “reviews” of the 2020 election, modeled on a deeply flawed look-back in Arizona. The efforts are poised to fuel disinformation and anger about the 2020 results for years to come.
All this comes as the Republican Party has become more aligned behind Trump, who has made denial of the 2020 results a litmus test for his support. Trump has praised the Jan. 6 rioters and backed primaries aimed at purging lawmakers who have crossed him. Sixteen GOP governors have signed laws making it more difficult to vote. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll showed that two-thirds of Republicans do not believe Democrat Joe Biden was legitimately elected as president.
The result, experts say, is that another baseless challenge to an election has become more likely, not less.
“It’s not clear that the Republican Party is willing to accept defeat anymore,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and co-author of the book “How Democracies Die.” “The party itself has become an anti-democratic force.”
American democracy has been flawed and manipulated by both parties since its inception. Millions of Americans — Black people, women, Native Americans and others — have been excluded from the process. Both Republicans and Democrats have written laws rigging the rules in their favor.
This time, experts argue, is different: Never in the country's modern history has a a major party sought to turn the administration of elections into an explicitly partisan act.
Republicans who sound alarms are struggling to be heard by their own party. GOP Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming or Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, members of a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, are often dismissed as party apostates. Others have cast the election denialism as little more than a distraction.
But some local officials, the people closest to the process and its fragility, are pleading for change. At a recent news conference in Wisconsin, Kathleen Bernier, a GOP state senator and former elections clerk, denounced her party’s efforts to seize control of the election process.
“These made up things that people do to jazz up the base is just despicable and I don’t believe any elected legislator should play that game,” said Bernier.
LOCAL CONTROL
Bernier’s view is not shared by the majority of the Republicans who control the state Legislature in Wisconsin, one of a handful of states that Biden carried but Trump wrongly claims he won. Early in 2021, Wisconsin Republicans ordered their Legislative Audit Bureau to review the 2020 election. That review found no significant fraud. Last month, an investigation by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty came to the same conclusion.
Still, many Republicans are convinced that something went wrong. They point to how the nonpartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission — which the GOP-led Legislature and then-Republican governor created eight years ago to run the state’s elections — changed guidance for local elections officers to make voting easier during the pandemic.
That's led to a struggle for control of elections between the state Legislature and the commission.
“We feel we need to get this straight for people to believe we have integrity,” said GOP Sen. Alberta Darling, who represents the conservative suburbs north of Milwaukee. “We’re not just trying to change the election with Trump. We’re trying to dig into the next election and change irregularities.”
Republicans are also remaking the way elections are run in other states. In Georgia, an election bill signed this year by the GOP governor gave the Republican-controlled General Assembly new powers over the state board of elections, which controls its local counterparts.
The law is being used to launch a review of operations in solidly-Democratic Fulton County, home to most of Atlanta, which could lead to a state takeover. The legislature also passed measures allowing local officials to remove Democrats from election boards in six other counties.
In Pennsylvania, the GOP-controlled legislature is undertaking a review of the presidential election, subpoenaing voter information that Democrats contend is an unprecedented intrusion into voter privacy. Meanwhile, Trump supporters are signing up for local election jobs in droves. One pastor who attended the Jan. 6 rally in the nation's capital recently won a race to become an election judge overseeing voting in a rural part of Lancaster County.
In Michigan, the GOP has focused on the state’s county boards of canvassers. The little-known committees’ power was briefly in the spotlight in November of 2020, when Trump urged the two Republican members of the board overseeing Wayne County, home to Democratic-bastion Detroit, to vote to block certification of the election.
After one of the Republican members defied Trump, local Republicans replaced her with Robert Boyd, who told The Detroit Free Press that he would not have certified Biden’s win last year.
Boyd did not return a call for comment.
A similar swap — replacing a traditional Republican with one who parroted Trump's election lies — occurred in Macomb County, the state’s third most populous county.
The Detroit News in October reported that Republicans had replaced their members on boards of canvassers in eight of Michigan's 11 most populous counties
Michigan officials say that if boards of canvassers don’t certify an election they can be sued and compelled to do so. Still, that process could cause chaos and be used as a rallying cry behind election disputes.
“They’re laying the groundwork for a slow-motion insurrection,” said Mark Brewer, an election lawyer and former chair of the Michigan Democratic Party.
The state’s top election official, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, warned: “The movement to cast doubt on the 2020 election has now turned their eyes ... to changing the people who were in positions of authority and protected 2020.”
TRUMP’S RETRIBUTION
That includes Benson.
Multiple Republicans have lined up to challenge her, including Kristina Karamo, a community college professor who alleged fraud in the 2020 elections and contended that the Jan. 6 attackers were actually antifa activists trying to frame Trump supporters.
Trump has been clear about his intentions: He is seeking to oust statewide officials who stood in his way and replace them with allies.
“We have secretary of states that did not do the right thing for the American people,” Trump, who has endorsed Karamo, told The Associated Press this month.
The most prominent Trump push is in Georgia, where the former president is backing U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, who voted against Biden's Electoral College victory on Jan. 6, in a primary race against the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. He rejected Trump's pleas to “find” enough votes to declare him the winner.
Trump also encouraged former U.S. Sen. David Perdue to challenge Gov. Brian Kemp in the GOP primary. Kemp turned down Trump's entreaties to declare him the victor in the 2020 election.
In October, Jason Shepherd stepped down as chair of the Cobb County GOP after the group censured Kemp. “It’s shortsighted. They’re not contemplating the effects of this down the line,” Shepherd said in an interview. “They want their pound of flesh from Brian Kemp because Brian Kemp followed the law.”
In Nevada, multiple lawsuits seeking to overturn Biden's victory were thrown out by judges. A suit aimed at overturning his congressional loss was filed by Jim Marchant, a former GOP state lawmaker now running to be secretary of state, and it too was dismissed. The current Republican secretary of state, Barbara Cegavske, who is term limited, found there was no significant fraud in the contests.
Marchant said he's not just seeking to become a Trump enabler, though he was endorsed by Trump in his congressional bid. “I've been fighting this since before he came along,” Marchant said of Trump. “All we want is fair and transparent elections.”
In Pennsylvania, Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who organized buses of Trump supporters for Trump's rally near the White House on Jan. 6, has signaled he’s running for governor. In Arizona, state Rep. Mark Finchem's bid to be secretary of state has unnerved many Republicans, given that he hosted a daylong hearing in November 2020 that featured Trump adviser Rudolph Giuliani. Former news anchor Kari Lake, who repeats Trump's election falsehoods, is running to succeed Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who stood up to Trump's election-year pressure and is barred from another term.
Elsewhere in Arizona, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, who defended his office against the conspiratorial election review, has started a political committee to provide financial support to Republicans who tell the truth about the election. But he's realistic about the persistence of the myth of a stolen election within his party's base.
“Right now,” Richer said, “the incentive structure seems to be strongly in favor of doing the wrong thing.”
HIGH STAKES RACES FOR GOVERNOR
In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Democratic governors have been a major impediment to the GOP's effort to overhaul elections. Most significantly, they have vetoed new rules that Democrats argue are aimed at making it harder for people of color to vote.
Governors have a significant role in U.S. elections: They certify the winners in their states, clearing way for the appointment of Electoral College members. That raises fears that Trump-friendly governors could try to certify him — if he were to run in 2024 and be the GOP nominee — as the winner of their state's electoral votes regardless of the vote count.
Additionally, some Republicans argue that state legislatures can name their own electors regardless of what the vote tally says.
But Democrats have had little success in laying out the stakes in these races. It's difficult for voters to believe the system could be vulnerable, said Daniel Squadron of The States Project, a Democratic group that tries to win state legislatures.
“The most motivated voters in America today are those who think the 2020 election was stolen,” he said. “Acknowledging this is afoot requires such a leap from any core American value system that any of us have lived through.”
